mass hysteria

Floaters been promotin’ “YOUR moral decay is going to get ME into heaven” for a helluva long time. According to Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts the first predicted Apocalypse was in ca. 2800 BC. Even if you discount that for some reason, the next was in 634 BC.

Depending on how you define the Apocalypse, the end of HUMANS or the end of the WORLD, the real apocalypse comes in ca. 4,500,000,000 AD when the sun will swell into a red giant star, swallowing Mercury, Venus, Earth, and perhaps Mars. This will be the true end of the world!

Personally and IMNSHO, the way we burn shit to save time and effort, not to mention get around and generate electricity, is going to end the human race LONG before then. Maybe in this century. We’re probably already past the tipping point…

Consider this my public apology to my grand-kids/great grand-kids that I didn’t do more, and earlier, to battle the anthropogenic global climate change deniers. Starting with the Bible-thumpers, then moving on to Big Oil funded quasi-“scientist” and (you have to have seen this coming) Republicans and ESPECIALLY teabaggers…a “vast conspiracy” of scummy people determined to make the world a better worse place.

Although no one has yet given me a satisfactory explanation of how ANY of the proposed legislation, including expanded background checks, would have prevented the tragedy in Sandy Hook, it looks like most of America, once again, has decided that passing more laws in response to tragedy, without consideration of unintended consequences, in a pussy attempt to feel “safer”, is the way to go.

We wouldn’t want to expand care for the mentally ill, or maybe make life easier for ex-cons coming out of prison when it’s so much easier to become even more authoritarian, after all. That’d be too “liberal”, or “Christian”, or something.

Expressing considerable confidence that trained drug-sniffing dogs are reliable, and showing specific respect for one Florida police dog — Aldo — the Supreme Court on Tuesday made it quite easy for police officers to search a car or truck for drugs once a canine snooper has “alerted” to a smell on the vehicle. If the police offer evidence that a dog has been trained, or got a certificate from a training agency, that may well be enough to give police permission to turn an “alert” into a search of a vehicle, the Court said in a unanimous decision written by Justice Elena Kagan (Florida v. Harris, docket 11-817).

The Court specifically rejected a very detailed checklist of proof of a dog’s reliability that the Florida Supreme Court had drawn up before a court could treat a dog’s signaling of the presence of a drug odor as the equivalent of “probable cause” to search. In place of such a checklist, the Court set up a “reasonably prudent person” test — that is, a common-sense review of all of the facts about a dog’s alert, to see if such a prudent person would think that a search would turn up evidence of illegal drugs. “A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test,” Kagan cleverly summed up.

Did your buddy leave a roach in your ashtray? Do not pass “GO”, go directly to jail. Loaned the car to your kids and “a friend” smoked a joint in it? You’d better hope your spouse didn’t leave a prescription container in the glove box, cuz buddy, that ain’t yours and you’re now guilty of illegal possession of drugs.

I’m amazed by dumb-fuck liberals currently calling for the cops to outgun citizens. Especially when there’s shit like this going on, too.

If you want to disarm citizens, try it. Institute the “reasonable” limits on magazine capacity.

Just don’t expect us to all go along when you make an exception for cops. Their lives aren’t worth more than mine, or my wife’s, or my child’s, or my grand-childs…

The second worst school massacre in US history didn’t involve so-called “assault weapons” (where “assault” weapon is analogous to saying “painting racing stripes on a high performance sports car makes it a death machine”). That asshole had 2 pistols.

Existing CT law at the time of the Sandy Hook School shootings already banned high performance sports cars with racing stripes painted on them assault weapons, so the weapons Lanza used would be legal under any future “assault weapons” (a term applied to cosmetic features of guns) ban.

I want to say something about how much I loathe the people who would stand on dead bodies, like George Bush did with that megaphone on the rubble and bodies of the dead on 9/11, to further a pre-determined political position (e.g. if you wanted to ban assault weapons the day BEFORE the Sandy Hook Massacre, and are now using the deaths of those children to further your political agenda of banning so-called “assault weapons”, you disgust me), but that’s non-productive so I won’t. But using dead children as a political “wedge issue” really IS disgusting.

When will liberals get serious and address the issue of why gun violence has increased so dramatically IN RECENT HISTORY?

Semi-automatics have been around since the turn of the 20th century, 1905, or so. With the proper license you can still buy a full auto in the US (although I’m not aware of any mass killings using one, recently).

Clearly something has changed, and clearly the change is;

A) Recent (say, in the past 20 or 30 years, but that date range is open to interpretation, but NOT open to interpretation back to the turn of the 20th century), and

B) NOT RELATED TO GUN OWNERSHIP!

How’s about we fund some studies, by well-qualified research groups, competing for funding in a competitive granting process, into what’s changed? Isn’t that a “progressive” way to do things?

When will we demand that the media stop glorifying these mass killers?

When will we call them the cowards that they are, thus reducing their belief that the “winner” of the “video game” is the one who kills the most?

To this day, I can’t tell you the name of the man who killed John Lennon. This is by intent. I, personally, have relegated him to the dustbin of history.

We need to look into the abandonment of parental responsibility in favor of over-medicating children who are “different”.

What else?

I’m throwing out ideas, and may have more of my own, but I’m open to suggestion.

The one thing that’s clear is, all this talk about guns isn’t productive. Banning guns, when there are already mnillions in circulation, won’t help. Banning high-cap mags, when there are already 100s of millions in circulation, doesn’t help.

Getting all those guns and magazines out of private hands is a pipe dream that doesn’t help. There’s no way a so-called “assault weapons” ban will pass the House, and even if a high-cap magazine ban passes, there are so many out there that it won’t make a difference.